Chapter 8
THREE TREATISES BY ETIENNE BINET, S.J. (1569–1639)
Thomas Worcester
There was no shortage of plagues and other disease in France. In their excellent work, The Medical World of Early Modern France, Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones include a thorough examination of the frequency of epidemic disease from 1500 to 1800. They show how plague especially was very widespread and recurrent in France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but then largely disappeared after the Marseilles outbreak of the early 1720s.1 Brockliss and Jones focus on medical aspects: how what was perceived as “plague” was dealt with as a medical problem to be prevented or cured. In a book on Jesuit accounts of plague in sixteenth-century Europe, A. Lynn Martin takes a somewhat different approach. He sheds light on how members of an important Catholic religious order wrote about plague: how they described it, explained it, and sometimes designated remedies—physical and spiritual—for it.2 This essay looks at how Etienne Binet, a French Jesuit writing in the century after that examined by Martin, presented plague and other diseases less as afflictions than as [225]valuable spiritual opportunities, and how Binet relied heavily on medical analogies in talking about spiritual things.
Etienne Binet, S.J., was a writer, preacher, and administrator. While his years of formation in the Society of Jesus were spent in Italy, as a priest he returned to his native France to take up a series of posts in several cities, including Paris. He published some fifty books in his lifetime, many of which went through multiple editions or were translated into various languages.3 At least two were concerned with care and consolation of plague victims or other persons suffering from illness: his Consolation et réjouissance des malades, first published in 1617, and his Remèdes souverains contre la peste et la mort soudaine, first published in 1628.4 In 1636 he published a treatise on governance (especially but not exclusively of religious orders), in which he argued that the best type of government was a gentle one in which superiors act like physicians.
The work on consolation of the sick, Consolation et réjouissance des malades, is structured as a dialogue between a sick person and one who consoles him: Le Malade and Le Consolateur. The Consolateur wastes no time in responding to questions about why God permits good people to suffer illness. The Consolateur asserts that God strikes his servants and best friends with illness because he loves them and wants to have them exercise their virtue.5 While the world loves as mothers do, nourishing their children with milk at their breasts, God loves as a father, with a “virile love” and with austerity. Illness draws vagabond and scattered souls back to God; God conducts them to paradise through the purgatory of illness. Paradise is well worth the little that one suffers, for it would be a bargain even at the price of all the illnesses in the world.6 The God who cures the “ulcers of our souls” is like the physicians and surgeons who cure the infirmities of our bodies. They cut with razors and remove large pieces of flesh, they open veins and bleed us, and yet we much thank them for cutting us to pieces.7
Yet, having presented God as an austere father and surgeon, Binet goes on to describe him as tenderly holding the sick person in his arms. “Do not doubt,” he says, “that God is seated at your bedside and that he is there to gather up your tears and sighs, to heal your wounds, to fortify your heart,” to “hold you tenderly in his arms,” and to “deliver you” and “enrich you with his glory.”8 But such tenderness is not extended to all. Alluding to [226]the biblical story of Lazarus and the rich man, the Consolateur points out that the poor beggar Lazarus was carried to paradise by angels, while the “rich glutton was engulfed by hell.” In his cruelty, the glutton had refused all humanity to Lazarus, though he fattened up his dogs and his own delicate flesh. As the glutton had a heart of iron for Lazarus, God would have no paradise for the glutton.9
To the Malade who says, “I am very ill,” the Consolateur replies with several answers. He points out that Pliny, “who knew everything,” said that with but two or three exceptions, he knew of no one who had not suffered some illness. So why would you want to be exempt from this?10 “Illness is the mistress of virtues and the purgatory of our sins,” while good health is “the purgatory of virtues and the mistress of vices.” When you are in good health, you are too busy to think of God or to talk to him; when you are sick and in bed, give yourself the patience to listen to the divine word. Good health “tickles your body and assaults your virtues”; the lancet and cauterization, passing through your skin, will reach even to your conscience and will drain the putrefaction. Your sweat will evaporate your vanities.11 “Awkwardly do health and holiness fraternize together” (malaisément la santé et la sainteté fraternisent ensemble).12
In the words of the Consolateur consoling the Malade, Binet appeals for confidence in divine Providence. Illnesses, however they come about, are the “ordinary couriers” of heaven’s favors. God himself will then sit down at your bedside and he will “embrace you tenderly, dry your tears and sweats”; he will give you a place among the princes of his court.13
The spiritual advantages of specific illnesses and bodily infirmities Binet details at length. To the blind person or to those fearing that they are becoming blind, the Consolateur insists that the blinding of the body aids the innocence of the soul. Eve, Samson, David, and Solomon were all defeated by their eyes. To one person, eyes show adultery, to another, incest; they show a house to covet, money to steal, vanities to follow. All the evils of the world use “the eyes as a passport” through which to attack us; “through this window,” pleasures and debaucheries spread revolt among our passions and “shake the fidelity of the higher powers” of our soul. It is not for nothing that our Savior said it was much better to pluck out a dangerous eye and enter paradise without it than to go to a thousand devils with beautiful eyes. The one with eyes closed but with an open heart sees God and virtue face to face, and understands the secrets of the books of [227]paradise that are closed to the eyes of the curious.14 Saint Paul was blinded for three days, but it was then that the glory of heaven began to dispel the “thick darkness of his soul.” A bolt from heaven struck his eye and his heart; one closed to the earth, while the other opened to heaven. A lion was changed into a lamb, a thief into an apostle.15
According to Binet, deafness also has spiritual advantages. The world is “lost by the tongue and by the ear.” If you are deaf, when you pray to God you will have fewer distractions; the enemy will have no entrance into the “castle of your soul.” To hear the holy word of God, it is not necessary to open the ear, but only the heart; receive the Eucharist frequently and you will hear all the airs of paradise and the eloquence of the angels. “Millions of saints” made themselves hermits, hiding themselves; if you are deaf, you can be a hermit in your own house and a solitary in the midst of crowds. God blocked your hearing so that the “mortally gentle” voices of voluptuousness and vice would not lead you to a dissolute life. If God made you deaf, it was in order to save you.16
Binet emphasizes the importance of seeing the example of the saints in consoling the sick person. To dispel the sadness and melancholy that may afflict the ill, the sick should fill their room with beautiful paintings of the saints. (Binet does not seem concerned that the blind person may find these remarks anything but comforting.) Thus the Consolateur declares: look at the virtues of the saints painted on canvas, speak to the saints from your heart, listen to what they say to you, be with them; their “holy company” will dissolve the knots that bind your heart. Do as Charlemagne did, he advises; he had the gallery where he took his meals painted with all the marvels of the world. In dining, he had gained “learned thoughts” from these rare paintings.17 The sick person should have hung in his room paintings excellent in beauty and in representation of some beautiful story: a beautiful crucifix, a Notre-Dame looking at you with a favorable eye, a Saint Stephen under a hailstorm of stones, or a Saint Sebastian shot with arrows.18 “Speak to them without saying a word”; engage in a dialogue with them, not tongue to tongue, but “eye to eye” for there is no better company than the dead who speak through a book, yet they speak even more easily through painting. “By sight” their patience will enter your heart, and their torments will revive your courage. Yet take care to change from time to time the paintings, for the same one, after a time, could bore you and no longer attract your attention.19
[228]Binet continues at some length on what he calls “the power of painting and the imagination.” Caesar Augustus, he recounts, was melancholy after the death of a young grandson whom he loved. But when his wife had a small image made of this little boy, Augustus would erase his melancholy by looking at the image. So too the sick may be helped by an image of the young John the Baptist playing with a lamb or of the little Jesus hanging on the “virginal breast” of his mother. “If you had a beautiful image of the mother of God or of Saint Catherine in majesty,” you would not believe how the sight of them will rejoice your heart.20
Though he has less to say about music than about images as consoling, Binet does also recommend music to the sick. This method he says is “gay and full of gentleness; take pleasure in someone playing the lute or the harpsichord,” or singing “some gentle song full of harmony.” While listening, take the occasion to raise your heart to God and say, happy are you, souls who “now enjoy in heaven the holy music of the angels.”21 Binet adds that the most knowledgeable of physicians have said that to cure sciatica there is nothing better than the playing of a gentle flute; the harmony of our bodies accompanies other harmonies.22
Besides mentioning briefly various saints whose images may help to console and strengthen the ill, Binet also includes biographies of various saints he proposes as good examples to follow. Saint Louis (1214–70) is one of these. Though king of France (as Louis IX, reigned 1226–70), Saint Louis considered it more important to be a “good servant of God than a powerful king of men.” Saint Louis was often sick, but he said that never did God send him some ill without also sending a gift to rejoice his heart. Spending five years in the Orient, he buried “with his own royal hands the stinking cadavers of Catholic soldiers massacred for the faith.” In France, he went to the sick on his knees, bringing some morsel to the mouths of the hideous and the rotting. When Saint Louis was in Africa, animated by zeal to plant the faith, a contagion of plague afflicted the country and his army. He himself was struck down by it; on his deathbed he smiled, consoled everyone, and ordered that the blessed sacrament be brought to him. Everyone present wept and melted in tears.23
In his treatise on plague and sudden death, Remèdes souverains contre la peste et la mort soudaine, Binet also held up the example of Saint Louis. Binet asks his readers, “Do you think that this holy king was afraid or complained to God, pointing out that he was after all making war for him?” Rather, “this [229]holy monarch of France so thanked the divine goodness and spoke such tender words at his death” that he could melt the hearts of his entire army.24 Binet exhorts his readers to learn from the glorious Saint Louis. This king, “the glory of kings, seeing himself struck down with plague and with death on his lips and a tear in his eye,” prayed for the grace to despise the vanity of this world and to never fear the adversities of this miserable life. Binet adds that one should pray the prayer Saint Louis learned from his mother, Queen Blanche, which was imprinted on his heart: “My God, my creator, may I die thousands of times rather than knowingly commit a mortal sin.”25
The very title of Binet’s plague treatise closely associates the plague and sudden death. Among the circumstances of sudden death mentioned by Binet is the case of a healthy young man who retires after dinner to what turns out to be his deathbed. Such suddenness, Binet explains, is frightful, but he quickly adds that the fear of sudden death may be a very salutary fear. Such fear makes one think of the salvation of one’s soul, helps one put good order in one’s conscience, helps one to prepare a general confession in writing and to confess often, and to not wait until death to put oneself in God’s hands, but rather to live every day as if it were one’s last.26 The full title of a 1629 edition of Binet’s plague treatise makes clear that consolation is his purpose: Sovereign remedies against the plague and sudden death: whence devout souls may draw a very gentle consolation, and spiritual recreation, both during the contagion, and in any other affliction or illness.27
Binet argues that, without the plague, there would be less devotion and fewer saints. Indeed, Binet begins this treatise with the question of “whether the plague brings more ill than good.” Acknowledging that his answer offers a paradox, Binet admits that plague “with a single breath” massacres everyone it encounters, be they potentates and popes, the people rich and poor, and the innocent; “it separates father from son, mother from the child hanging on her breast.”28 Yet, Binet insists that God, who is goodness itself, would not permit such ills if the good to come from them were not greater. Will the one who fears death and plague amuse himself with the “follies of this perishable life”? People are never as wise as when plague runs through the streets; then they keep themselves from debauchery. There are so many vows, alms, devotions that would never have been without plague; prayers, [230]masses, and communions.29 Using wordplays that do not work in English, Binet states that “all people are holy” (tout le monde est saint) when they are “not in good health” (on n’est pas sain) or when they fear not being in good health for long.30
Anticipating an objection regarding the sacraments and plague, Binet both acknowledges that many die of plague without going to confession, and insists that plague is a kind of preaching that succeeds in a call to repentance. Seeing the repentant hearts and dispositions of those afflicted with plague, God saves them even without their confessions. Binet asserts that people are never better prepared for salvation than during a plague; never has a preacher preached true penitence more efficaciously than has the plague. Plague is thus a “happy necessity” that forces people to become saints and to throw themselves “upon the paternal bosom of God.”31 The plague is a “happy ill, cause of eternal happiness.”32 Binet compares God to a fisherman. Just as there is a fish that will not allow itself to be caught except in the midst of an ocean storm, there are souls whom God seems unable to catch except by raising some storm and by throwing them into fear of a cruel plague or of a bloody war, “for it is then that they give themselves to God.”33
Binet argues that in a time of plague people turn not only to God, but they also turn to their neighbors in order to help them. The time of plague, he declares, is also one of martyrs. Those who die from aiding plague victims are true martyrs if they act out of the love of God. The time of plague is a time of salvation, “blessed by God” for making saints and martyrs of paradise.34
Attempting to refute any notion of a contradiction between God’s goodness and his sending of the plague, Binet declares that he is not surprised that God sends the plague from time to time, but he rather is surprised that God does not do so every day, seeing what human lives are like. Should it not be a continuous fever, Binet asks, “since we continually offend his holy goodness, and we pierce his heart with the darts of our enormous crimes?”35 If God wished to send “thunder and plague” every time we acted against heaven, the universe would long ago have become “a cemetery of the plague-ridden and of rotting carcasses.”36 While it is our “perfidies” that “force” God to send us the plague, our faults are thus punished in this world rather than in hell. It is thus the “clemency” of God’s justice that sends the plague.37 [231]Yet plague not only substitutes a lesser punishment for the eternal punishment of hell; it also calls people to do their duty and to embrace virtue; it makes them good and wise. Thus, for Binet, plague is an oxymoron; it is the “gentle rigor of divine goodness.”38
Given all the positive things Binet has to say about plague, one may wonder whether his title—Sovereign remedies against plague and sudden death—is appropriate. Yet Père Binet does, in fact, take up the question of remedies and preventive measures. “Medically speaking,” he asserts, “nothing keeps the plague away better than living joyously: true joy comes from true contentment, and perfect contentment is found but in purity of conscience.”39 Binet explains that he will apply to the soul the recipes prescribed by physicians for the body. Thus while “those gentlemen” prescribe myrrh, aloes, and saffron, Binet prescribes meditation on the Passion of Christ in which one may savor the myrrh, aloes, and bitterness of death. The physicians swear that one or two good bleedings will prevent one from getting the plague; whosoever removes bad humors from his heart by well-made frequent confession and by the giving of alms, will either avoid the plague, or if he gets it will not harm him, or if it does “massacre” him, it will be for the sake of his gaining eternal life.40 While the physicians of Paris prescribe things such as lemons or perfumes or sponges soaked in powerful vinegar, there are better recipes than these, for as the plague comes from heaven, so the antidote must as well. Thus, the act of true contrition is a unique remedy against sudden death. One should also have daily devotion to the Mother of God, who crushes the head of the dragon with her heel. One should make a complete confession of one’s entire life, tearing out sinful humors that spoil the heart; and one should savor often the nails, absinth, and strong vinegar of the Passion of Christ.41
Plague finds a place in Alain Corbin’s study of the history of smell and the olfactory imagination.42 Binet could well have been included. Well aware that air was thought to bring the plague, Binet points out that the physicians recommend avoidance of the stench of a dunghill, dirty water, and sewers. They also say that pure air chases the plague away. To this, Binet replies by affirming that the best air is the air of paradise. The one who opens his mouth, heart, and the depth of his soul to God breathes this air; in humility, one finds the odor of a perfect perfume; in charity one keeps fear from entering, for “true charity excommunicates fear” and makes it [232]die. Indeed, “love is stronger than death, than plague, even than all of hell.”43
Near the end of his life, Binet published (in 1636) his work on gentle and rigorous manners of governance, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement?44 Both in the seventeenth century and beyond, it appeared in various French editions as well as in translations to several foreign languages.45 In his literary history of religious sentiment in France, Henri Bremond ranked Binet among the most important disciples of Francis de Sales and singled out his 1636 work on governance as the most “human” and “genuine” of all Père Binet’s writings.46 At the age of sixty-seven, after many years as a superior, Binet presented the advantages and disadvantages of gentleness and rigor. In so doing, he relied very heavily on medicinal analogies, and especially on the notion of the superior as analogous to the physician.
In his introductory chapter, Binet asserts that everyone acknowledges the most perfect government to be one where rigor and gentleness serve each other, a government where, when the one who governs becomes angry, his anger is that of a dove and a lamb and does not harm anyone.47 Binet’s presuppositions about gender difference manifest themselves in his statement that the one who governs ought to have the sentiments of a father when he is angry, but also the tenderness of a mother.48
In arguing for the priority of gentleness over rigor, Binet is quick to turn to concrete examples. Asserting that the three greatest men in the history of the world are Moses, Jesus Christ, and Saint Peter, Binet states that they all favored gentleness. While Moses was the most gentle person of his time, Jesus set examples of humility and gentleness. As for Saint Peter, he wept more than he commanded, and when it was a matter of giving him the government of the church, he was told only to love.49 Among founders of religious orders, Binet finds abundant gentleness. Binet cites Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, as one who advocated two things for a superior: that he be “efficaciously gentle and gently efficacious.” Francis of Assisi gave maxims to the guardians of his order such as “be a physician, not an executioner,” for the perfection of government consists in watching, loving, caring, pardoning, and feeding.50
Binet’s Jesus, whether an infant or child, or in his earthly ministry, or reigning in heaven, is a model of gentleness. Merry Wiesner has argued that the early modern cult of the holy family presented Joseph no longer as [233]an old man in the background—as he had been in many medieval depictions—but as “strong and vigorous,” and “dominant,” with a young Mary (and Jesus) under his protection.51 Binet, however, presents a rather different image by responding to his own questions of how the “holy and sacred family” was governed and who commanded. He concludes that Jesus did not command, for he came to earth to obey. Our Lady did not command, for she submitted to God and to her husband. And Joseph commanded “even less,” for he did not command his Sovereign or the Queen of the Angels. They all “prayed more than they commanded,” and they acted rather than commanded, for “example is always the most powerful command.”52 In the interaction of Jesus with sinners, Binet finds abundant examples of gentleness. In receiving Mary Magdalene, Jesus received her “lovingly” and treated her not as a severe judge would, but as her “charitable advocate.” With the most “tender affection” he hid her in the “bowels of his mercy,” and acted like the father of the prodigal son.53 Responding to those who might cite Jesus cleansing the temple with a whip as evidence for a rigorous Jesus, Binet argues that while Jesus seemed about to exterminate those who profaned the temple, he actually injured no one; he is not seen in the Gospel actually using the whip he prepared.54 Binet adds that Jesus succeeded in winning more hearts and in converting more souls by his goodness and gentleness than by “his most zealous preaching.”55
In Christ ascended into heaven, Binet also finds gentleness. In the Lamb governing paradise (chapter 21 of the Apocalypse of Saint John), Binet sees proof of the strength of gentle government. In what spirit, asks Binet, did God accord this vision to Saint John if not to teach him that just as the Lamb, the “figure of gentleness,” governs paradise, so man should not raise up any other virtue in earthly governance?56
Binet follows up comparison of Jesus and the father of the prodigal son with more extensive consideration of that father. While the prodigal child engaged in debauchery, his father prayed for him; at the first sign of his son’s return, the father opened his “paternal heart” to receive his son and forgot all that had happened. While the son intended to fully confess his sins, the father runs to embrace him; a good superior does likewise, only half hearing confession of faults by his subjects, so eager is he to extend mercy to them.57 Commenting further on the merciful qualities of a good superior, Binet states that such a superior knows well human infirmities and [234]acts as a “good physician” and corrects faults by pouring oil and balm on wounds so that the sick may be healed.58
Care of the sick—specifically those suffering from plague—is at the heart of what Binet finds praiseworthy in Carlo Borromeo (1538–84), archbishop of Milan. Referring to the Milanese plague of 1576, Binet lauds the charitable example set by this “tender prelate.”59 Binet credits this cardinal and saint (Borromeo was canonized in 161060) with finding the way to inspire his priests to help the sick in time of a cruel plague. He did this not by commanding his clergy, but by himself serving the sick, and setting a good example to be followed. Borromeo entered the houses of plague victims and surprised death itself. Clerics following this charitable example were not the least reason why God withdrew “the vengeful arm” he had extended over that poor people.61
But the favorite example of a gentle superior and prelate was Francis de Sales (1567–1622), who had lived and died not too long before, and to whom Binet devoted his greatest attention in Quel est le meilleur gouvernement? Indeed, Binet makes references to him throughout the book, and the entire last chapter is on this bishop of Geneva.62 Binet himself was born in 1569, just two years after Francis de Sales, and thus they were contemporaries. In the decades following his death in 1622, de Sales was the object of a canonization campaign, one that would eventually succeed with beatification in 1661 and canonization in 1665.63 Binet highlights the work of Francis de Sales in seeking to bring Protestants back to the Catholic Church. When some responded favorably, he received them as “prodigal children” and embraced them with tears in his eyes, like the father of the prodigal son, and with the tenderness of a mother. For the bishop of Geneva, the tenderness of a good superior consisted above all in a tender heart, always inclined to pardon and to excuse the weakness and fragility of others.64 But on occasions when Francis de Sales did feel within the heat of passion and anger, he would hold his tongue in silence until the anger had passed.65
Binet’s Francis de Sales not only acted with gentleness as a superior, but he also advised other superiors to do likewise, including women superiors. When female superiors complained to him of the imperfections of their [235]charges, the bishop of Geneva smiled and asked them if they themselves had no faults and told them that if they did not, it was due to a special grace of God. Francis de Sales would tell them that religious life is not composed of “perfect persons” but of those who seek perfection; one does not arrive at such a state in a week—look at yourselves. As for me, he would say, I prefer to “suffer with the infirm and to bring them along slowly, rather than to hurry them and to injure patience and charity.”66 Binet recounts that the bishop of Geneva would tell the superiors of the Order of the Visitation (a religious community for women that Francis had founded with Jane de Chantal) that they should love the imperfect “more tenderly” than the perfect, for it is the sick who need a physician. It is better to go to excesses in goodness than in “false zeal,” for the latter is often nothing but impatience.67
How Père Etienne Binet actually functioned as a superior may be another matter. But in his treatise Quel est le meilleur gouvernement? he persistently praises gentleness and compassion; he returns regularly to a number of analogies in making this point, the analogy between a physician and a superior ranking highly among them. The “medicine” the superior is to apply to his “ill” subjects is a gentle one, not one of razors and bleedings or of violent purges.
Thus, physicians and medicine as spiritual metaphors are central to how Binet imagines God and God’s dealings with humanity; they are also at the heart of how Binet envisions ministry and holiness. With specific respect to the plague, Etienne Binet presents it both as a kind of opportunity for spiritual growth and as something that may be conquered by spiritual remedies. His positive manner of talking about what for many has to have been an almost unbearable horror may seem very foreign to modern people, but he conveys a confidence in the ultimate triumph of life and love over death that few in any age would want to discard. Père Binet’s widely disseminated essays are, for cultural historians, very important primary sources for understanding devout attitudes in time of plague in early modern Europe.
[236]BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barker, Sheila. “Plague Art in Early Modern Rome: Divine Directives and Temporal Remedies.” In Hope and Healing, 45–64.
Binet, Etienne. Consolation et réjouissance des maladies et personnes affligées (1617). Edited by Claude Louis-Combet. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1995.
———. Quel est le meilleur gouvernement: Le rigoureux ou le doux? (1636) Avignon: Seguin Aîné, 1842.
———. Remèdes souverains contre la peste et la mort soudaine (1629). Edited by Claude Louis-Combet. Grenoble: Jérôme Millon, 1998.
Bremond, Henri. Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France. 11 vols. Paris: Colin, 1967.
Brockliss, Laurence, and Colin Jones. The Medical World of Early Modern France. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Camus, Jean-Pierre. L’Esprit du Bienheureux François de Sales. 6 vols. Paris: Alliot, 1639–41.
Corbin, Alain. The Foul and the Fragrant. Translated by M. Koshan. London: Picador, 1994.
Hildesheimer, Françoise. La terreur et la pitié: L’Ancien Régime à l’épreuve de la peste. Paris: Publisud, 1990.
Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague 1500–1800. Edited by Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Pamela M. Jones, Franco Mormando, Thomas W. Worcester. Exhibition catalogue. Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 2005. Distributed by University of Chicago Press.
Images de la peste dans l’histoire. Paris: Histoire au présent, 1990.
Jones, Colin. “Plague and Its Metaphors in Early Modern France.” Representations 53 (1996): 97–127.
Le Goff, Jacques. Saint Louis. Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
Lucenet, Monique. Les grandes pestes en France. Paris: Aubier, 1985.
A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on Francis de Sales. Edited by Elisabeth Stopp. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1997.
Martin, A. Lynn. Plague? Jesuit Accounts of Epidemic Disease in the 16th Century. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1996.
Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image. Edited by Franco Mormando. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 1999. Distributed by University of Chicago Press.
San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century. Edited by John Headley and John Tomaro. Washington DC: Folger Books, 1988.
Sommervogel, Carlos. Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. 10 vols. Brussels: Schepens; Paris: Picard, 1890–1909.
Stopp, Elisabeth. A Man to Heal Differences: Essays and Talks on St. Francis de Sales. Phildelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 1997.
Wiesner, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Worcester, Thomas. “Saint Roch vs. Plague, Famine, and Fear.” In Hope and Healing, 153–76.
———. Seventeenth-Century Cultural Discourse: France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997.
1 Brockliss and Jones, Medical World. See also Hildesheimer, La terreur et la pitié; Images de la maladie; and Lucenet, Les grandes pestes en France. On plague as metaphor, see Jones, “Plague and Its Metaphors.”
2 Martin, Plague?
3 See Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1: 1488–1505.
4 For a discussion of Binet’s Remèdes souverains contre la peste in relation to Poussin’s plague masterpiece, The Plague at Ashdod (Rome, 1630–31), see Elisabeth Hipp’s essay in the present volume. On Binet and plague, see also Worcester, “Saint Roch vs. Plague,” 164–65; and Barker, “Plague Art in Early Modern Rome,” 57.
5 Binet, Consolation et réjouissance, 24. Citations are from the most recent (1995) edition. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of this and other works are the author’s.
6 Binet, Consolation, 25–26.
7 Binet, Consolation, 28.
8 Binet, Consolation, 35.
9 Binet, Consolation, 37–39.
10 Binet, Consolation, 43.
11 Binet, Consolation, 43–44.
12 Binet, Consolation , 47.
13 Binet, Consolation, 50–51.
14 Binet, Consolation, 71–74.
15 Binet, Consolation, 80–81.
16 Binet, Consolation, 81–84.
17 Binet, Consolation, 179.
18 On Sebastian, one of the most popular of early modern plague saints, see Sheila Barker’s essay in this volume.
19 Binet, Consolation, 271–73. Binet here offers an excellent example of the baroque belief in the power of images. On this belief, see Saints and Sinners.
20 Binet, Consolation, 273–74.
21 Binet, Consolation, 275.
22 Binet, Consolation, 278.
23 Binet, Consolation, 52–54.
24 Binet, Remèdes, 64. Unless otherwise indicated, citations are from the most recent (1998) edition.
25 Binet, Remèdes, 91. On the history of the cult of Saint Louis in the late Middle Ages, see especially Le Goff, Saint Louis. Scholars have thus far given less attention to seventeenth-century devotion to Saint Louis, even though that was a period of great interest in him.
26 Binet, Remèdes, 19.
27 Binet, Remèdes, 1629 edition.
28 Binet, Remèdes, 1998 edition, 15–16. The image of the child attempting to nurse at its dead mother’s breast is a topos of plague painting, as seen in Poussin’s The Plague at Ashdod and Sweerts’s Plague in an Ancient City, two works discussed in this volume.
29 Binet, Remèdes, 18–20.
30 Binet, Remèdes, 20.
31 Binet, Remèdes, 26–27.
32 Binet, Remèdes, 29.
33 Binet, Remèdes, 32.
34 Binet, Remèdes, 33.
35 Binet, Remèdes, 35–36.
36 Binet, Remèdes, 36.
37 Binet, Remèdes, 35–36.
38 Binet, Remèdes, 40.
39 Binet, Remèdes, 46–47.
40 Binet, Remèdes, 47–48.
41 Binet, Remèdes, 52–53.
42 Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant, 63–66.
43 Binet, Remèdes, 75–77.
44 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 6. Citations are to the 1842 edition.
45 See Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1:1502–3.
46 Bremon, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux, 1:146.
47 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 6.
48 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 6.
49 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 12–13.
50 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 27–29
51 Wiesner, Women and Gender, 238.
52 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 75–76.
53 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 50.
54 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 52.
55 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 52–53.
56 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 45.
57 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 92–93.
58 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 97–98.
59 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 80–81.
60 On Saint Charles, see San Carlo Borromeo.
61 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 80–81.
62 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 152–75.
63 Jean-Pierre Camus (1584–1652), the bishop of Belley, played a major role in this effort to promote the sanctity of Francis de Sales. See Camus, L’Esprit du Bienheureux François de Sales. On Camus as a disciple of de Sales, see Worcester, Seventeenth-Century Cultural Discourse, 19–21, 31–33, 218–20.
64 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernment, 161–62.
65 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernment, 158. On Francis de Sales as skilled in promoting peace and reconciliation, see Stopp, A Man to Heal Differences.
66 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 155–57.
67 Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, 171–72.